The Trouble With Immortality

In an article published in the newsweek on 18 june, 2010, Jonathan Weiner talked about the implications of immortality and why we should not hope for immortality.

Many people desire immortality. However, immortality may not be as good as many of us seem to think. With the current global warming getting worse, immortality would be a worse option. If we were to live forever, it would mean that we would have to live in a worse environment compared to the one we are living in now. There may be many advancement in technology which would bring convenience into our lives but environmental issues would still be a very big problem.

The world’s population is already increasing at such rapid pace and is currently very crowded already. With immortality, the earth would soon become over populated and the quality of life would rapidly deteriorate. Also, with an overcrowded planet, there would not be much space between people and this might also lead to an increase in contagious diseases.

There is a large difference between leading a long life and leading a quality life. Without a quality life, a long life would be meaningless. However, it is impossible to get both. So, we should stick to a quality life rather than desiring to get a long life. I agree that everyone wants a good long life which is impossible to achieve with immortality. The longer we live, the worse our environment is going to get. It is impossible for us live a good life with the deterioration of the environment and the increasingly overcrowded earth. Thus, immortality is definitely not a solution for a good long life.

We should not be striving for immortality for ourselves. Instead, we should try to strive for immortality for the Earth. We should be protecting our planet, protecting the resources. If we do that, then we would have succeeded in obtaining “immortality” for the human race.